Danny Boyle on Don't Look Now

The legendary filmmaker on his favourite film

As the British Film Institute archive celebrates it's 80th anniversary, legendary filmmaker Danny Boyle discusses his favourite film from its vaults.

Don’t Look Now is the greatest husband and wife film there has ever been. What’s really remarkable is its explicit depiction, sexually and emotionally, of a long-term adult relationship. It is usually classed as a horror film, but the director Nicolas Roeg doesn’t work with fright in the easy, jumpy sense of the word, like The Exorcist, which also came out in 1973. It is Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie’s relaxed performances as John and Laura Baxter, a couple mourning the loss of their young daughter, that make the film shocking; Roeg works with deeper emotions like dread, grief and apprehension and that is how the horror accumulates.

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Take the most famous scene, when John and Laura’s lovemaking is intercut with their dressing afterwards. Love scenes are usually about people who shouldn’t be making love or are making love for the first time, but here is a couple who have known each other intimately for so long. The tenderness is extraordinary to watch. Classicists revere David Lean’s films because they are technically perfect. But Don’t Look Now’s lack of perfection creates an appetite in me to take risks, for danger, for exploration; something more valuable than perfection. Roeg uses familiar elements – like the biggest stars of their day – to lure you in, then makes no compromises. In film terms, he is our Picasso.

Danny Boyle is an Ambassador for Luminous, the BFI’s Fundraising Gala, raising money for the BFI National Archive and the future preservation and digitisation of the UK’s National Collection of film and TV. Luminous will be on 8th October at 8 Northumberland.